Introducing myself as suggested. I've been writing amateur fiction for, er, decades 9nothing I really want to shout about though) but never taken part in any collaborative writing projects. Was pointed here by deValmont a couple of weeks back and after doing a hell of a lot of reading concluded I love SCP and want to be a part of it. Currently working on my first which will likely appear in the announcements for its trial by fire in the next week or so.

Do you really want your first SCP to be judged like that? It's a way, sure, but a harsh one. You might want to consider sandboxing it and showing it in the forums and IRC chat before- this could help you get rid of some of the most obvious (and lethal) mistakes new authors make.

As a friend, I can afford to be ruthless in my critique, so there are some things I will pick out that I know will lose you votes. It reads very well, but there's a lot of informalities that have crept in. Keeping the tone as dry and scientific as possible whilst still imbuing the article with the atmosphere necessary to have an effect on the reader is very difficult, and phrases like "A local haunt" are a little too purple prose for SCP articles. Also a lot of people have issues with using quotation marks to put colloqualisms into the text. It's seen as cheating for a lot of people. I don't mind it personally, as long as it's evidential that it is part of a direct quote or interview.

Redacting the place the site staff need to go to is a BIG no-no. This document is designed so that the people resonsible for the containment of the item or event are able to read the containment procedures and quickly re-contain in the event of an SCP getting out of its containment. To not let the people reading it know where they have to go or what they are supposed to use for cleaning would be daft.

The whole thing reads very well, and I know exactly what you're writing about, and I like that idea a lot. Unfortunately writing SCPs is an absolute bloody minefield, and I don't think this one would fly on the main list. I could very well be totally wrong, however. I frequently am, as you well know.

I can easily handle correcting the "known haunt" etc issues plenty of other options there.

As a query what are the policies on naming real-life operating business? Obviously I can simply make shit up, but other ideas were coming so it was easier to leave it as redacted for the time being. The cleaning stuff is fine, it did have a name, which I changed to redacted, easily changed back.

The best guide for the containment procedures are 'What is the absolute minimum information that I would need to ensure that this thing was safely locked away'. Redaction there would be a problem. Stuff in the recovery log can be redacted, if it's no longer relevant to the containment procedures, or if someone unauthorised knowing it could lead to further problems. Redactions to things like place names are fine, there's a very good guide on redaction Here which says it better than I could.

In terms of it not flying, it's tricky to give a definitive explanation, I think it's a combination of informal tone and the slight lack of familiarity that comes from not having had an article ripped to shreds the the baying wolves. One thing I would be careful to do is to make sure that the description starts with a very clear and concise description of what the SCP items are and what their effects are. This is a pain from a prose point of view as it removes the opportunity for a slow build to a reveal, but it's how the articles are written. I really struggle with this and usually have to write a description at the end, as what it does usually changes while I'm writing the Recovery Log (Having a seperate RL after the description helps me a lot with my structuring).

This is all my opinion, however, and I have been very very wrong about articles before. We've done enough RPs over the years for me to know how good your writing chops are, and so I am very confident you'll write some crackers. Not entirely sure about this one. Maybe the best bet is to set it free and see what you get.

All very useful. I'm going to have a crack at implementing this, I can certainly get behind what you're saying about the description, some basic re-ordering will help I imagine and I'll take the editing axe to it when there's time. I'm interested in getting some critique from some long-timers who don't know me in real life before setting it free.

As an aside if you remember the story I wrote a while back based on idea you came up with, reckon that would make a good tale? I know the concept of the Thing has been done, but it might well work here as a tale with a bit of re-writing?

Hmm. There are a lot of portal-based articles, but as is often said, that doesn't matter if yours is good.

The tricky thing I find is that a lot of very good stories don't fit the article template, and so a lot of my existing ideas don't translate to SCPs well. But there is always the Tales section for prose, as well.